


The Third Aphrodite

by Mercurie



Category: Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF, Historical RPF, Original Work
Genre: Dreams, Drowning, Gen, Growing Up, Lesbian Character, Magical Realism, Ocean, Storytelling, Suicide Attempt, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 23:24:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4324818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercurie/pseuds/Mercurie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's said that Sappho killed herself by jumping off a cliff when she failed to win the heart of the beautiful ferryman Phaon. This tale has the story backwards, for in fact Sappho died not at the end of her life, but at the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Aphrodite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sevenofspade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/gifts).



> I'm pleased to be able to use the tag "Lesbian Character" in its most literal sense.
> 
> For History Exchange 2015. Hope you enjoy!

It's said that Sappho killed herself by jumping off a cliff when she failed to win the heart of the beautiful ferryman Phaon. This tale has the story backwards, for in fact Sappho died not at the end of her life, but at the beginning.

When Sappho was fifteen, she wished to drown herself. She told no one of this wish, but her careful secrecy did her no good. On the day she chose to hang a bag full of rocks around her neck and leap from a cliff into the sea, a sudden squall rushed out of the distance. A powerful wave dashed the bag of rocks away and another washed her onto the shore, where she lay retching, bloodied, and covered with sea-foam until she was found by slaves from her father's house. They took her back home and put her to bed, where she instantly fell into a profound sleep. 

Sappho dreamed that she was attending a symposium: a drinking party. She was the only woman there, but the men didn't treat her like a flute girl or a courtesan. Every eye was fixed on her with the glassiness of awe as she stood before the semi-circle of couches singing and playing the lyre. She sang a poem about love, but in the back of her mind she could still feel the black water suffocating her as she fell towards the sea floor, and she knew it was this memory that gave her song its spellbinding power. It was the feeling of sinking into an unknown depth she was singing of, but to her listeners it sounded like love.

She awoke to her mother saying her name. Her mother, Cleïs, didn't usually pay her much attention, but today she was sitting by Sappho's bedside and smoothing her hair. 

"How could you swim so far?" she said. "You always try to swim too far. I've told you again and again that it's dangerous."

Her mother hadn't guessed that she had sought the danger on purpose. To Cleïs, life was something to be hoarded and treasured, like a vein of gold mined laboriously from the rock. No amount of pain or drudgery could distract her from watching for every opportunity to snatch a moment of joy. So Sappho didn't try to explain to her mother that she had jumped; she was sure Cleïs wouldn't understand. Besides, her own despair from only a few hours ago seemed very far away now. The memory of her dream remained so substantial it felt almost more real than her bedchamber and her mother sitting beside her. 

"I'm sorry," she said placidly to move on from the subject. "I'll be more careful from now on."

Her mother's harried look didn't soften. "It's our fault. We've kept you too close. A fifteen-year-old shouldn't be hemmed in under her mother's eye. A young woman needs her own household."

"Own household?" Sappho repeated. The notion popped into her head to say that was a lie – the household belonged to the husband. She would never have her own unless she became a widow. But to be a widow one first had to be a wife, and there was nothing she wanted less on Earth. 

Her mother continued to speak of marriage, leaving home, settling down, and having children, but Sappho found it too painful to listen. It was this talk of marriage her parents had returned to again and again in recent months that had led to her despair, and here was her mother trying to comfort her with more of it. She longed to object to these plans for her future, but shame stilled her tongue. Not only would she be gainsaying both her mother and her father, she had no alternative to suggest. What could she do but be a wife? Her three brothers were already drawing the admiration of everyone on Lesbos with daring sea voyages and friendships with important men; her father's name rang from one end of the island to another; but she had always been the shadow of the family, hanging back, and furthermore she knew her parents preferred it that way. Fame was immodest. A woman would prove herself of weak character if she craved it. 

While her mother talked she thought instead of her dream, which no one knew about and no one could blame her for. When Cleïs left, she fetched a tablet and stylus and sat down to write the words to the song she'd sung. They were just as she remembered: simple words about love, but heavy with the weight of the ocean still haunting her mind.

This weight of memory did not lift in the weeks that followed. The heaviness was like a black curtain that shields a room from the too-bright summer sun. In the middle of a conversation Sappho would think of the sea, what it had felt like pressing her down into its depths, what it had tasted like and how it had burned when it entered her mouth and lungs, how dark it had been, how silent, how immense its strength had been when she flailed, insect-like, against it. She marvelled at the fact that no one else knew of this memory. No one knew she had wanted to drown or what it had felt like. No one could guess what she was thinking of when the memory preoccupied her. For the first time she became aware of the opacity of her own self to others, the secrecy in which she could wrap herself.

And she did have secrets. From the day when the sea refused to drown her, Sappho dreamed the same dream every night. She sang at the symposium, admired, worshipped, the centre of all attention, arresting every thought so that her audience was suspended in her words. Her listeners were not faceless dream-puppets, but men she knew: Charaxus her successful brother, Alcaeus the famous poet, Pittacus who wished to be tyrant of Lesbos. She drank in their adoration, revelling in the experience of not being overlooked. It was impossible, here, for anyone to overlook her.

In the mornings she woke exhausted – this sleep wasn't restful like other sleep, but as tiring as if she had lived a real day – and spent the day in furious concentration, writing down the words and plucking out the melodies she had played. She reproduced in the waking world what she had dreamed, and to her surprise, the songs seemed just the same in reality: smooth and heavy, sparkling with detail but reserved with an air of the unfathomable. 

She absorbed herself in these songs so she could better ignore what her mother and father were doing. Sappho had had a suitor before she had leaped from the cliff, and since he knew nothing of the leap, he remained her suitor afterward. He was the old man Cercylas, and she found him repulsive, not because he was old, but because he wished to marry her because he liked her father. If he had been helplessly in love with her, if he had been her slave in love, she could have tolerated marriage to him even if she didn't love him back, but since what he coveted was the relation to her father and not Sappho herself, she couldn't think of the match without humiliation. Even in marriage Sappho was not to be desired: that was what it seemed like to her.

It was just as well. She was sure no one man could have satisfied her. What she wanted was to step out of the walls of the house all together and be seen by everyone.

She continued to live a double life, singing poetry like a Muse at night, languishing indoors over her stylus so that she would not have to think of Cercylas during the day, until her mother informed her that the marriage had been agreed upon and a date would soon be set. 

That night she had a new dream. 

As always, she sang at the dream-symposium. The men sprawled on the couches, their eyes fixed on her, a goddess on Earth. The dream had grown so life-like with her continued imagining that she could smell the wine and the cheese; olives and grapes shone, linen whispered, sweat prickled at her temples. The gathering was large and illustrious. The tyrant of Sicily sat practically at her feet, looking up at her, his political ambitions forgotten. But now someone she didn't recognize had joined the company: a woman, the only other woman she had ever seen at her symposium. She lay on a couch of her own, naked, with her arm thrown over her forehead so that Sappho couldn't see her eyes, though she could feel them on her more distinctly than any other pair in the room. 

The audience took no notice when she stopped playing, but talked among themselves as if nothing was amiss. Nor did they notice the naked woman among them: the spot where her couch stood may as well have been invisible, their faces never turning towards it.

To Sappho, however, it was impossible to look away from this strange woman. She felt as if a force was moving her towards the woman the way the ocean wave had pushed her irresistibly onto the shore. Almost without thinking, she found herself standing before the new couch and its occupant, her lyre clutched in shaky fingers and her eyes downcast, but stealing little looks. 

She could hardly help looking, since this was certainly the most beautiful person she had ever seen. She longed to touch the curve of the woman's hip – her fingertips burned with desire as if they had a will of their own – a curve that was neither tender like a bud nor ripe like a fruit, but in fact mathematical in its sweep, like the inside of a shell. All of the strange woman's body had this elegant proportionality, so that Sappho thought if she touched the woman with her sun-dark, narrow-fingered hands, she would unbalance the whole picture, making it something less than perfect. 

Yet the thought of touching refused to disappear, and with it there flashed through her mind an exulting image of her desirous fingertips digging little grooves into the curve of those hips, her head sinking into this stranger's lap, unbalancing her forever. On the heels of this image came fear – not fear that the woman would be offended, but fear that the image which had struck so powerfully into her heart would never leave her, that she would carry it with her like the memory of drowning.

"Why am I dreaming this?" she wondered aloud. It was the first time she had spoken in the dream instead of only singing. 

"Are you dreaming, Sappho?" the woman asked, looking at her from beneath the arm lying over her forehead. Her copper hair pooled around her like a stream and her eyes were grey, very alive, but distant, as if they were only a tiny chip of something bigger and the rest of her was occupied elsewhere. 

The sound of the woman's voice shocked Sappho. She hadn't expected the dream-figure to speak, and to speak in such a way that it seemed autonomous of her own thoughts. She could think of nothing to say, and the longer she hesitated, tongue-tied, the more the woman seemed like a real being and not a dream-figment at all. 

"Perhaps this is the true reality and your other life the dream," the woman mused. "For if you have two lives, who can say which is the true one?"

"Two lives?" Sappho repeated, unable to make sense of the woman's words.

"Why, you've had two births. First you were born from the water of your mother's womb and then you were born from the water where you drowned. It stands to reason you now have two lives."

"How do you know I drowned?" Sappho said. "Who are you?"

"Don't you know me? I'm the wave that washed you into your second life. I'm the sea that accepted your sacrifice and granted your wish for a different future. I am Aphrodite of the sea-foam."

Sappho could only stare. With every word, she became more convinced that she was indeed speaking to a goddess. This Aphrodite, however, was so different from how the stories described her. Sculptors and painters loved to depict the goddess, but in their art Aphrodite was beautiful but modest: fully clothed or, if some hint of flesh was unveiled, animated with maidenly shame, with averted eyes and shielding hands. This Aphrodite surely had never felt any breath of shame, despite her total nakedness. Yet there was nothing brazen, proud, or defiant about her bareness. It was as if it had never occurred to her to be clothed, or as if she didn't know the difference between being covered and uncovered. Her immodesty wasn't lewd, it was inhuman and, to Sappho, a little frightening. 

"It's Poseidon who rules the sea," Sappho said, for despite Aphrodite's lack of shame, it seemed rude to express these thoughts about the goddess's nakedness to her face.

"He rules the water, but I rule the birth of things from that water, like you and like myself. Do you remember how you appealed to me, Sappho? When you were sinking into the sea you thought 'gods, I don't want to die after all.' Between you and me, you aren't the first suicide to change her mind halfway through the job. But I decided to take pity on you, Sappho, and I made you a new life out of sea-foam and blood."

"I didn't know you were listening," Sappho whispered. "You aren't like I expected. You aren't like men say you are." And, unable to resist temptation any longer, she dropped to the ground beside Aphrodite's couch and touched the goddess's knee with her thin brown fingers, just so she could know what it felt like. It wasn't like touching a painting – passive, indifferent – at all, but like brushing a leviathan when you're innocently diving for shells: a terrifying touch of something huge, alive, and unknown.

"Your philosophers don't know I exist," Aphrodite said. "They know only two aspects, two faces of love: the heavenly Aphrodite, who rules the love of men for other men, and the common Aphrodite, who rules men's love of women. But I am the third Aphrodite, who women call the secret Aphrodite because men cannot know me. How can they know of something that exists only between women? I am as different from the other two loves as they are from each other; but they are all Aphrodite."

With these words she took Sappho's hand from her knee and turned it upwards. It was her right hand, her strong lyre-playing hand, and the goddess kissed the centre of her palm. 

When Aphrodite's lips touched her skin, Sappho awoke, starting up on her sleeping couch. It was morning, the sky outside as rosy as Aphrodite's mouth. She shivered pleasantly, thinking that dawn was secretly kissing the world, and no one knew it but Sappho. 

She lay for a while, thinking. Gradually, the memory crept into her mind that her mother and father had agreed yesterday that she should marry Cercylas, that her mother would come today to discuss what she might take for her dowry, and that very soon her life would change. All this seemed less urgent than it had only the day before. Her life had already changed. It wasn't immediately obvious to Sappho why she should feel this way. The goddess had given her no advice and made no promises. The dreams were still dreams. Yet the sense of being trapped that had driven her to leap from the cliff and to prefer her dream-world to reality had dissipated. 

This new feeling of freedom led her to slip from the house before anyone else was stirring and wander down the rocky path to Mytilene. On the way, an idea came to her. She walked unchaperoned like a child to the city and, once arrived, entered the prostitutes' quarter like a harlot, but these she felt now were only meaningless words, and really she was only like herself, Sappho.

She went to the house where the flute girl Doricha lived, who she knew from Charaxus' accounts of the drinking parties he attended was a popular entertainer. Doricha, who was Egyptian, dark, and dignified, did not resemble the Aphrodite of Sappho's dream, but in the living harmony of her movements Sappho saw the shadow of her goddess. Perhaps Doricha saw something similar in Sappho, for when she explained her wish, Doricha laughed and agreed immediately. 

That very evening she completed the act she had begun when she had leaped from the cliff into the sea: the killing of Sappho. Instead of returning home, she went with Doricha to perform at a symposium held at Alcaeus' townhouse in Mytilene. Just as in her dreams, every eye fixated on her instantly: these high-born men knew her, knew that she was a respectable girl and her appearance here was a suicide as far as her family was concerned. 

As soon as she stepped into the room, her reputation was ruined; and as soon as she finished her first song, it was remade. Sappho strangled her marriage and her former future before they could be born, but in the rapt wonder shining from the face of Alcaeus, the greatest poet in Lesbos (so far), she saw her new future, no longer modestly hidden away in the shadows of the house. 

Just as her audience now had all the vibrancy and animation of real people, so her songs were more alive and vivid than they had been in her dreams. Now they had not only the weight of her descent into the sea, but the heat and sweetness of Aphrodite's kiss and the elusiveness of her secret aspect. This, Sappho believed, was why the goddess had saved her life: so that she could sing of the third Aphrodite, whom the other poets and artists and philosophers neglected in their ignorance, but who needed human worship just as much as every other god or goddess. She put her hands to the task with a fierce joy, for if Aphrodite loved to be sung of and admired, Sappho loved to sing – and longed to be admired. 

She set the strings of the lyre humming and smiled. _Sappho_ : she would make the name bright beyond any remembrance of infamy. Her name had been reborn in the sea, and since she had already died once, it could now live forever.

**Author's Note:**

> The distinction between the heavenly and common Aphrodite is explained in Plato's _Symposium._


End file.
